My New House

Well a printed one, that is.

In SketchUp I modeled the house with window and door cutouts, then added the window and door frames to be printed separately. The roof (whose two pieces are sitting in the house), were also printed separately, in two halves that could be glued together but fit pretty well on their own.

The house itself took NINE hours to print, but the rest of the pieces were much faster.

I needed to snap pictures quickly, since my kids are itching to steal this house for their Lego Friends characters....

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Look What I Made Today

This was really fun - a pencil holder with my business name. The letters were printed separately, then each one fit into its spot on the box. The tolerance was exactly right - no glue needed and those letters have no wiggle room.

This was printed in several parts - each letter is separate and the pencil holder was printed as one part with a color change after the base.

This model required some trial testing first - to see if the pencil hole would work, and to see if the letters would fit. The first trial showed I needed to leave more space around each letter.

The trials showed that with 0.15mm offsets all around each letter, they fit perfectly. Now everyone in my family wants their own...



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What's Coming in Our December Projects?

Here's what will be going out to subscribers to our Projects of the Month on December 15. Lots of fun stuff to keep you busy through winter break!

Logo Tracing

Have a favorite sports team or band? This project shows how to use simple tools to create a model just from tracing. Great for 3D printing! (And yes, I grew up in Baltimore :)

 

Curved Ramp

We saw another project using the amazing Shape Bender plugin, and this project shows another use for it. You start with a simple object . . .

. . . and bend it to fit a specific curve. Something like this would be nearly impossible to model without Shape Bender!

 

Water Vortex
This project starts with a digital image of spiraling water . . .

. . . and ends with the painted 3D model of a water vortex.

 

Don't get bored if you're snowed in this month! Subscribe to our Projects of the Month.

Anyone can design anything in 3D! http://www.3dvinci.net/

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3D Printed Ornament

Every year our wonderful next-door neighbors invite my kids over to help trim their Christmas tree - my kids love opening their boxes of ornaments and throwing tinsel around. (Not to mention the chocolates and cookies that come with the visit.)

Each year we make them something to add to their tree. So now that I have my loaner Afinia printer, what else could I make but a customized ornament?

First I found an image of a tree that looked easy to trace:

I imported the image into SketchUp, and used arcs to loosely trace around the tree. It's easiest to do this in X-Ray view, so that the picture can be seen through the SketchUp faces that are created.

I then used the Offset tool to separate the three segments of the tree, pulled up everything 3 mm, then pulled up the white parts an additional 2mm. The names were added with the 3D Text tool, and curved with the amazing Shape Bender plugin. And luckily I remembered to add a small hole at the top.

 

I set the printer to pause at 3.1 and 5.1 mm to change colors: first black, then white, then red for the names. Here's how it turned out, after about 90 minutes of print time:

 And here you can see the vertical layering:

 And here it is on the tree, fitting right in!

 Today it's snowing on the East Coast, so I have some time to start planning out my next printing project. I'm thinking about personalized pencil holders....

Anyone can design anything in 3D! http://www.3dvinci.net/

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